May 22, 2014

• Friendship blooms on Twitter between the nationalist leaders of India and Japan ever since Modi won.
• Anyone born in violation of China's one-child-per-couple policy does not exist legally.
• See also: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the case for reparations to African-Americans.
• Beth Israel gives patients access to therapists’ notes.
• Good, solid thinking is very hard to do—but even if it's not wired into us genetically, it can be learned.
• It should have been the best business tool since the telephone. Instead email has become the biggest time-waster since television.
• Side effects of Google Glass may include "glassing out," overheating, and social death.
• Roger Federer and Stefan Edberg strap on Google Glass.
• Courts at Roland Garros have 10 inches of stone, six inches of slag, four inches of limestone, three millimeters of broken brick, and no clay.
• Fifty senators, citing the example of quick action against Donald Sterling, urge the NFL to change the name of the Washington Redskins.
• Happiness at the misfortune of others is as American as apple pie.
• Veteran reporter learns, 38 years later, that he's allergic to newspaper ink.
• Homemade powdered alcohol: a journalist swallows it, snorts it, sprinkles it on pizza, and lights it on fire before concluding that beer is better.
• Reporter replaces her soaps and shampoos with billions of bacteria slowly coaxed onto the skin.
• France to trim 15% of its railway platforms, after realizing a fleet of new trains is too wide to fit into stations.
• Famous massive engineering mistakes, from too-fat trains to sinking submarines.
• Next time you hear a Pharrell song at a party, you can point out that many of his songs begin the exact same way.